Influence of dislocations in strained Si∕relaxed SiGe layers on n+∕p-junctions in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor technology

We present an investigation of junction leakage in highly doped n+∕p-junctions, fabricated in strained silicon/relaxed SiGe substrates. The leakage is shown to scale linearly with the threading dislocation density of the virtual substrate, which allows to estimate minority carrier generation lifetimes in good agreement with literature values. Even the highest-defective substrates in this work give a junction leakage density below 100mA∕cm2, and are not expected to significantly increase the power consumption of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) technologies. Threading dislocations will increase the junction leakage by ∼1nA in a small number of transistors in MOSFET circuits, but are not expected to have a negative impact on yield.